Thanks, man! I may or may not do it.  I wouldn't mind starting fresh with everything for some reason.

Pitstop? :P

It seems like asking that question means probably not. Especially if the games aren't what you are used to, but the video will still be good i'm sure. 

Mal is back and the 200/400 NLHE games are running!
Be nice to Isildur, though.

You were right.  I was ready!

and i might withdraw less TD2-7 tease :) 

You mean open fold or fold to 3bet?

I feel pretty strongly about having some folding hands in both spots at most stack depths.

We don't need a hh flop to stack his KK.  There are many boards on which we'll both have an overpair and the pot is bloated enough that we get it in.

Well he snap folded on J33cc to a minraise which is about as dry a flop as it gets. Of course he's not folding KK+open ender or anything on but our hand isn't completely crushing him then.

Maybe Oddsen could tell us more.

I think it's very unlikely he had KK there.

Thanks Zach!

Yeah... I mean in HU pots.  In multiway pots I lead a fair amount (though I go back and forth on this).

Both of your reasons are good ones.  The way I think about it is that there's a lot of shared "responsibility" for defending in multiway pots, so I'm less paranoid about a leading range ruining my checking range in a way I'm not aware of.  Even if it does, the other players in the pot can't attack with reckless abandon due to the fact that there's a third player with a hand.

If you can get a handle on the type of ranges your opponents have (especially the type the cold caller has when you overcall in the BB), you can take down a lot of pots by leading into the pfr (who now has two people to worry about) on a board that you're confident is unlikely to hit the cold caller.

Focus levels are a tricky thing.  I'm very aware of days where I just am unable to focus the way I want, and of days where I am laser focused.  I haven't been able to turn a bad focus day around, no matter what I've tried.

I also haven't really been able to figure out the cause of the bad (or good) days.  The main thing I've noticed is sleep, but even that isn't a great predictor of how I'll feel.

As far as advice- If you can afford to take days or sometimes weeks off when you're feeling unfocused, I suggest continuing to do that.  I play my best poker when I very much want to be playing. I play poorly when I'm 'grinding' because I feel obligated too.

I think you're probably doing it right.

All that said, I'm looking for the same kind of advice so let me know if you find anything out!  

Being focused and wanting to play poker (or feeling good about playing) is mostly a mental thing and sometimes seemingly random. Theres a ton of books out there addressing this and some of them are actually not complete crap! You have already listed some possible solutions for fixing this. The only thing I could add to what you and Phil said is working out. Usually a 30-90 minute workout mid day (whenever that is for you :D) is as refreshing as 8 hours of sleep in the sense that you can come back to the games laser focused, motivated and relaxed. This works well for me as I usually have no problem playing a 1-4 hour session after breakfast with good focus but after lunch when food coma sets in its hard to get back to it. if you wanna work out early in the day or after youre done pokering then that works too.

Usually giving this tip gets one of two responses:

1) yea dude I know, Im already ripped!

2) gaaaah i was hoping you wouldnt say that

intense cardio like running til exhaustion for 30mins+ or doing interval training like plyo or any other cardio that completely exhausts you seems to clear your mind the best. but lifting weights or even going for a 10 minute walk outside and then jump into the shower is better than plowing through or drinking more coffee in my experience.

If both stacks were 100bb (or 50bb), I'd be calling here.  With a short stack to my right, I get put in a lot of awkward flop spots where he jams over a cbet on a flop that I feel comfortable putting in 20bb on but not 100bb.

Funny that you say "people" and "the shortstack", while it is Jeans89!

I'm curious about Phils approach to this spot overall and not just because of my tendencies and how I view this spot :)

Hey buddy :)

2:18 - I certainly won't defend this play as balanced or unexploitable.  

Given what you wrote, my assumptions were off... Probably due to the fact that we haven't played many hands together in the last 6 months and that we've played very little short stack PLO together.  Actually, I've just played very little in general as of late.

I expected you to be bet-calling most overpairs / TP and bet-folding weak-medium flush draws.  I expected you to be x-jamming with a lot of stronger draws and some TP type hands as well.  (this also explains why I bluff river)

I didn't expect a lot of x/c's at this stack depth on a flop w/ two low (almost irrelevant) cards.  You're someone who I recall generally having a high cbet stat (as have I), but perhaps we're both reforming :)

53:23 - You're right.  I shouldn't bet this large since I'll want to add non-nut VBs, and it's by far the best way to do that.  

From a GT perspective (mentioning this since I've seen it talked about a lot)- If it was the case that my full range was comprised of nut flushes and NF blockers, and let's say I had 3 flushes for every 1 blocker- my understanding is that potting river or betting smaller to lay 3:1 makes no difference.  Either way I capture the full pot.

Maybe someone more well versed in theory can correct me, but I don't see how offering proper odds makes a difference.

18:00 - I'd like to hear what others think too.  I basically do everything I can to make sure people can't profit by bluffing spot like that where they lay me tremendous odds.

The air portion of his range is going to have few outs, presumably, so I do think the turn gets checked through a fair amount and I get to realize most of my equity against his bluffs.

That said, I won't pretend it's not at least a little spewy.  Maybe someone can help us with some math.

Ah yeah you are right, we really haven't been playing with one another much at all in over a year. 

Good point, I hadn't even thought of that but as long as we have more than enough vbets compared to bluffs (where vbets=nuts that can't split the pot and air=blocks the nuts) it doesn't matter how much more we bet than the threshold to make him indifferent to calling as he will just make the easy laydown everytime. 

However, lets say that threshold is 0.5pot, anything between 0,5-1(or ~)pot will have the same EV if he plays perfectly. However lets add the human element of not playing perfectly. I think all good players will understand the situation well enough to never be calling a full pot-sized bet there, but lets say we bet 0.6pot (which has the same theoretical ev), we might get an incorrect call every now and then. (This is under the assumption that a 0.6pot bet would be called over 5 times more often than a fullpot one and therefore more profitable).

About the last hand tho. You say you want to make sure he can't make a profit bluffing while laying tremendous odds to you, I don't understand what you mean, did you mean "while laying tremendous odds to himself"? 

Oddsen is risking 2.3k to win 2.9k with the with the clickback, so he really isn't getting too good of a price on a bluff, you need to be c/r bluffing here almost half the time for him to profit! If you truly think he is bluffing here a good enough % for you to make the call to the clickback, the c/r originally has to be a mistake.

I'm curious about Phils approach to this spot overall and not just because of my tendencies and how I view this spot :)

Ok, just sounded so distant, almost as if it wasn't you.

 If it was the case that my full range was comprised of nut flushes and NF blockers, and let's say I had 3 flushes for every 1 blocker- my understanding is that potting river or betting smaller to lay 3:1 makes no difference.  Either way I capture the full pot.
Maybe someone more well versed in theory can correct me, but I don't see how offering proper odds makes a difference.

This is correct, classic stuff. Also with a 3 to 1 nuts to nutblocker ratio you have a lot of freedom. For instance you can bet 0.2 times the pot with a part of your range to induce calls.

The basic downside of potting without the nuts or the nutblocker is that you need to defend your second nuts hands against raises, so if you have too much second nuts or second nuts blockers in your range, you need to defend them against raises. The larger your bet, the more it costs to defend, that is why you might want to bet smaller with your second nuts. But it shouldn't be a big issue in this spot, since Oddsen is less likely to get to the river with a naked Ad hand after calling twice OOP. And neither are there many naked Ad triple barrels in Phils range.

I think all good players will understand the situation well enough to never be calling a full pot-sized bet there, but lets say we bet 0.6pot (which has the same theoretical ev), we might get an incorrect call every now and then. (This is under the assumption that a 0.6pot bet would be called over 5 times more often than a fullpot one and therefore more profitable).

If Phil has still his 3 to 1 nuts vs nutblocker betting range, Oddsen should everything to any bet, even to a minbet. So if a 0.6pot bet gets called 1.67 (=1/0.6) times more than a potbet, betting 0.6pot becomes better with the nuts.

Oddsen is risking 2.3k to win 2.9k with the with the clickback, so he really isn't getting too good of a price on a bluff, you need to be c/r bluffing here almost half the time for him to profit! If you truly think he is bluffing here a good enough % for you to make the call to the clickback, the c/r originally has to be a mistake.

Assuming that a bluff is a hand that is too weak to call the check raise ans too weak to call a shove after clicking it back, that is not entirely true. Since Phil defends some of his range by calling, Oddsen gets to bluff turns, see rivers cheaply etc. This increases Oddsens value with marginal holdings. If you want to follow this logic, you must classify Phils hand as a bluff since he didn't shove over Oddsens clickback.

The fact that Oddsen has this move in his arsenal seems to exploit Phils tendency to checkraise marginal hands like QJ99:ss as Phil didn't seem to construct his range/strategy very well to counter this move.

[QUOTE]If Phil has still his 3 to 1 nuts vs nutblocker betting range, Oddsen should everything to any bet, even to a minbet. So if a 0.6pot bet gets called 1.67 (=1/0.6) times more than a potbet, betting 0.6pot becomes better with the nuts.[/QUOTE]

I didn't understand this, could you try to explain more clearly? His ev of calling our 0.6pot bet will be (1.6pot-0.6pot*3)/4=-0,05pot, while calling a full pot-sized bet will be (2pot-1pot*3)/4=-0,25pot

So he has to be calling the smaller bet 5 times more often than fullpot, no?

[QUOTE]Assuming that a bluff is a hand that is too weak to call the check raise ans too weak to call a shove after clicking it back, that is not entirely true. Since Phil defends some of his range by calling, Oddsen gets to bluff turns, see rivers cheaply etc. This increases Oddsens value with marginal holdings. If you want to follow this logic, you must classify Phils hand as a bluff since he didn't shove over Oddsens clickback.[/QUOTE]

I don't think Oddsen expects (I wouldn't) Phil to have a c/r/call range, just a value c/r/shove and a c/r/fold-range (Phil did seem to plan to c/r fold that hand as a bluff but got tempted because of the very good pot odds). Therefore Oddsens clickback bluffrange is going to consist mostly of low equity pure bluffs that didn't have enough equity to call the c/r

edit: also how do I quote a post here? :D

I didn't understand this, could you try to explain more clearly? His ev of calling our 0.6pot bet will be (1.6pot-0.6pot*3)/4=-0,05pot, while calling a full pot-sized bet will be (2pot-1pot*3)/4=-0,25pot
So he has to be calling the smaller bet 5 times more often than fullpot, no?

Assuming that Phil bets 2 combos of nuts for full pot and 1 combo of nutblocker for full pot, he has 1 combo of nuts 'left'. He can do whatever he wants with this combo, for instance minbetting the river or betting 0.6 times the pot.

If he wants to bet the same size with his entire range, just as you showed with your calculations, calling is always a losing play. So you never want to call the smaller bet, and never call the larger bet!

I don't think Oddsen expects (I wouldn't) Phil to have a c/r/call range, just a value c/r/shove and a c/r/fold-range (Phil did seem to plan to c/r fold that hand as a bluff but got tempted because of the very good pot odds). Therefore Oddsens clickback bluffrange is going to consist mostly of low equity pure bluffs that didn't have enough equity to call the c/r

Phil shouldn't be check raising many pure bluffs on such a drawy board, so even Phils bluffs will be tempted to call. So I disagree here, I think that Oddsen expected to see a ton of calls from the bottom of Phils range. In this videos Phil bet called with AA+nutflushdraw+gutshot around 26:00, leaving him with less than 1 pot sized bet:

http://www.runitonce.com/pro-training/videos/even-phil-tilts-4-table-2550-6-max-p/

It is safe to assume that Phil calls more than most players.

edit: also how do I quote a post here? :D

Copy text, select it, click Formatting -> Quote:

Phil shouldn't be check raising many pure bluffs on such a drawy board, so even Phils bluffs will be tempted to call. So I disagree here, I think that Oddsen expected to see a ton of calls from the bottom of Phils range. In this videos Phil bet called with AA+nutflushdraw+gutshot around 26:00, leaving him with less than 1 pot sized bet:
http://www.runitonce.com/pro-training/videos/even-phil-tilts-4-table-2550-6-max-p/
It is safe to assume that Phil calls more than most players.

The example you showed here is completely different for so many reasons, but let me just talk about the spot against Oddsen. If Phil did have AA+nutFD+GS oop there, he is shoving against the clickback for sure. The reason I'm fairly sure Oddsen won't be clicking it back with reasonable equity hands is because he has the option to call and play a turn in position with deep stacks, while clicking it back will very often result in galfond shoving a hand he is going with. This would be a disaster for Oddsen to not get to realize all the equity. If he did feel like there would be enough FE he would just go ahead and semibluff shove himself instead of clicking it back. However hopefully we can get Galfond here to answer my followup question, and maybe Oddsen to comment on the situation.

@GT and @Jeans-

Re: QJ99ss

You had the assumption that I was always jamming or folding in this spot (and that Oddsen's clickback implies he felt the same way).  I think many people will play the spot this way.

Still, I stand by my decision to call with this hand and a few others that will have the equity to do so.  

The fact that Oddsen has this move in his arsenal seems to exploit Phils tendency to checkraise marginal hands like QJ99:ss as Phil didn't seem to construct his range/strategy very well to counter this move.

If I am only folding or jamming, he gets to play all his hands that might otherwise shove this way, and because of that he can add more bluffs (than if he were to just jam).

As Jeans said, many of his decent hands will be able to call my c/r and continue, and given that a bluff-raise is relatively cheap (and as effective as shoving) he can now call even more of his potential semibluff shoves and just use pure air to re-bluff me.  Now he will get to profit with some hands that don't "deserve" to profit.  By having a range that includes some weaker x/r-call hands, I lower the EV of his pure-air bluffs.

@GT - Interesting stuff about splitting the way I play my nut flushes in a spot like this where I have "too many."

Makes perfect sense and will definitely allow me to add more EV to my river strategy.  Thanks!

curious about the short stack spot at :37 facing a 3 bet. Phil folded and I usually fold there, but Jeans said it was a very easy call so im curious. Is this a specific call v that player Jeans or all shortstackers? 

Thanks, Jonny.  I've been watching a lot of videos lately and have realized I enjoy watching faster paced videos myself.  Figured other people might too!

I did not know that, so thank you!

And welcome to the team :)

I just watched your first video last night.  Excellent work.

Thanks man... Yeah I think ds AA makes the best candidate for a slowplay in that spot, and I'd always jam with AA82ss.

Really depends on the opponent though and how they 4-bet and react to 5-bets.

I'd probably VB QJ on that river after checking back the turn.

I would likely bet the turn with AQ or better for value and that's about it.

Whoops!  Thanks man.